The Argosy — page 140: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Caramel Cottage. 125 Mr. Barbary appeared at supper-time, ate some cold lamb in silence, seeming to be buried in thought, and went back to the gun-room when he had finished. Katrine got to her work again, did a little, then put it away for the night, and turned to the book shelf to get a book. Standing to make a choice of one, Katrine was seized with conster- nation. On the lower shelf, staring her nght in the face, was Mr. Reste’s Bible. It had been given him by his dead father, and he set store by it. He must have left it down stairs the previous Sunday, and Joan had put it away on the shelves amongst the other books. ‘““T wonder if papa would mind opening the portmanteau again ?” thought Katrine, as she hastened to the gun-room, and entered. “Papa! papa! here’s Mr. Reste’s Bible left out,” she cried, 1m- pulsively. ‘‘Can you put it into the portmanteau ?” Mr. Barbary stood by the small safe in the wall, the door of which was open. In his hand lay some bank notes ; he was holding them towards the candle on the deal table, and seemed to be counting them. Katrine, thinking of the Bible and of nothing else, went close to him and her eye fell on the notes. He flung them into the cup- board in a covert manner, gave the door a slam, turned an angry face on Katrine, and an angry tongue. ‘“Why do you come bursting in upon me in this boisterous fashion ? I won’t have it. What? Will I undo the portmanteau to put in a Bible? No, I won't. Keep it till he chooses to come for it.” She shrank away fnghtened, softly closing the door behind her. ‘Those bank notes belonged to Mr. Reste: they were the same she had seen him put into his pocket book two days ago. Why had he not taken them with him ?—what brought them in her father’s pos- session? The advance shadow of the dark trouble, soon to come, crept into Katrine Barbary’s heart. In no mood for reading now, she went to bed, and lay trying to think it out. What did it all mean? Had her father conjured the pocket-book by sleight-of-hand out of Mr. Reste’s keeping and stolen the notes? She strove to put the disgraceful thought away from her, and could not. ‘The distress brought to her by the poaching seemed as nothing to this, bad though that was.—And would he venture abroad to-night again ? Joan’s light foot-fall passed her door, going up to her bed in the roof. Once there, nothing ever disturbed the old servant or her deafness until getting-up time in the morning. Katrine lay on, no sleep in her eyes ; half the night it would have seemed, but that she had learned how slowly time passes with the restless. Still, it was a good while past twelve, she thought, when curious sounds, as of dzgging, seemed to arise from the garden. Sounds too faint perhaps to have been heard in the day-time, but which penetrated to her ear unless she was mistaken, in the deep, uncanny, undisturbed silence of the night. She sat up in bed to listen. connicaookKks (SO